To Save a Hero
by TeddyBear98
Summary: Iris certainly never envisioned the Flash showing up injured at her door at two in the morning. But life was full of surprises. [set during season 1]


**Author's Note:** Hey guys! Happy to post my latest one-shot, because hey, I love me some WestAllen - even early on when it's only implied. This takes place very early in season one, and is basically an alternate way Iris could have found out of Barry's identity. Hope you all enjoy! Production of the next chapter of Infected will begin now that I have finished this!

* * *

Iris shot up like a rocket - and for a moment, she wasn't sure what had woken her from her slumber. All was quiet in the apartment, aside from the sound of the light rain outside hitting the windows. But then a loud noise echoed throughout the space, making her jump in surprise. It was the door, she realized - someone was knocking at the door. And not _just_ knocking; it was more like a pounding, persistent, and the journalist found the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end.

It was never good to hear pounding on your door at two o'clock in the morning.

Despite her unease, however, Iris found herself acting quickly, fumbling to turn on the bedside table lamp and opening the drawer of the nightstand, her hand closing around the pistol that she kept inside. Just because Eddie was out of town did _not_ mean that she was defenseless.

Her father's instructions running through her head, she took the weapon off of safety and pulled the hammer back, then slowly slid out of bed and made her way as quietly as possible towards the door. By the time she made it there, the pounding had seemed to lessen in severity and frequency, though still kept up - whoever it was clearly did not want to leave. Bracing herself and sucking in a deep breath, the journalist stood on her tiptoes to look through the peephole. And she found herself completely taken aback. While she wasn't exactly sure what she had been expecting to see, the reality was farther from anything her mind would have conjured up. Because standing there on the doorstep, red suit and all, was none other than the Flash himself: one arm wrapped around his torso, and gritting his teeth with a pained expression on his face.

For a moment, Iris was frozen in place, continuing to stare out the peephole. But as he weakly raised a fist to bang against the door again, she acted, undoing the lock and yanking it open. His eyes seemed to widen a little bit, as if after the time he waited he hadn't actually expected her to answer the door.

"Flash," she breathed, her eyes flicking up and down his body, trying to determine if he had any injuries besides whatever he was covering with his arm.

"I..ris," he warbled in that distorted way he had of speaking, his face vibrating as it always seemed to be around her. He stumbled slightly, and Iris made a noise of surprise, quickly moving forward to wrap an arm around him in support.

"Get inside," she ushered, helping him through the threshold and kicking it closed behind her. Thank God Eddie wasn't here for this - knowing her boyfriend's mindset towards Central City's resident vigilante, she was sure he would have been less than thrilled to let him into their apartment. But he wasn't due back from an out-of-town seminar until later, and there was no way she could turn the superhero away, seeing him as he was.

It took a lot of effort to get him back to the bedroom, with him shifting half of his weight onto her as he walked, one arm slung over her shoulder and the other still wrapped tightly around his torso. It was a relief to finally make it and set him down as gently as she could onto the bed; despite her carefulness, he winced, and she could see his eyes screwing shut even through the blur of his constantly moving face.

"You need to move your arm," she demanded. "I need to see the damage." She didn't once question why he hadn't gone to the team she was _sure_ he worked with instead of here, risking running into Eddie or having her turn him away - clearly if he was showing up at her door at this hour in the morning, they were not available to him. She had half a mind to find them and slap them upside the head. There seemed to be a moment of hesitation from the mysterious man on the bed, but finally he complied, peeling his arm away from the wound. Iris nearly blanched. The copious amount of blood stood out even against the red of his suit. She wasn't one to swear, but she couldn't help but let out a soft ' _fuck_ ' as she looked at it, the sticky, life-giving liquid still seeping out.

"What happened?" she asked quickly. "What did this?" It wasn't that she particularly wanted to know the details, what was surely a gruesome story behind it - it was that she needed to know, needed to know what she was dealing with in order to try and treat it. She was no doctor, but she had dealt with her fair share of injuries before. When her and Barry were younger, the latter had gotten himself into trouble more than she would like to admit - and they had often tried to deal with it on their own, to keep her overprotective father out of it. This was far different, but that didn't mean she wouldn't try.

"Shot," he gasped out, as if it were arduous to talk. And it must have been, she figured, between the pain and the effort it must have taken to mask his voice the way he did, to conceal his face. "Point blank - bullet still in." It was Iris's turn to wince. While it appeared through her research and investigating that the Flash seemed to heal fast if his quickly dissipating injuries were any judge, he probably couldn't heal right with a bullet stuck in his flesh. It couldn't feel at all pleasant, either - especially after being shot at point blank range. The one or two cops at the precinct who had lived through such a thing had painted a horrible picture of what it was like, how it felt. And she knew what she needed to do. She had to remove it.

"Don't move," she told him firmly, which was a stupid thing to say, she thought as she ran for the bathroom. Where would he go? She pushed it from her mind as she reached her destination, flipped on the light and fumbled through the medicine cabinet to find what she needed. Gauze, medical tape, disinfectant, tweezers, trauma shears - dating a cop meant having a lot of good supplies on hand. She then grabbed the hand towel from the rack and ran back out, wasting no time getting back to the injured hero. Her legs felt slightly weak as she saw the blood dripping onto her bed sheets, noticed that the vibration of his facial features seemed to have slowed. He was getting weaker.

"Hang in there, Flash," she said, kneeling down in front of him. "You're gonna be fine." She placed everything down on the bed except for the sheers, which she used quickly to cut away some of the excess fabric of his suit away from the wound. The bullet hole itself was not huge, but still it gushed blood, and there was a large area of purple and blue discoloration forming around the entry site - an ugly, painful looking bruise spreading out from the point of impact. She tossed the shears aside onto the floor and grabbed for the tweezers next. She paused for a moment despite the time crunch, trying to prepare herself mentally for what she was about to do.

"Brace yourself," she breathed. "This is gonna hurt." She was still not ready for the squishing sound, the yell of pain he let out as she started to dig around _inside his body._ His hand shot out suddenly, grasping onto her shoulder and squeezing as hard as he seemed to dare without hurting her. There was a feeling of familiarity as the hand brushed against her shoulder, a surprising spark of _I know that touch,_ but it was something she couldn't dwell on as she continued her searching. It seemed to take hours to find the foreign object in his skin, though it couldn't have been more than thirty seconds, a minute. Pulling it out was worse than shoving the tweezers in. Flash tightened his grip on her shoulder - yet the minute the bullet was out it immediately loosened, all tension seeming to leave his body. His guise of facial vibration was nearly gone, and she could make out a pair of half-lidded, tired eyes. "Hang in there," she repeated as she reached for the towel, disinfectant, gauze and medical tape. "You're gonna wanna lay down for this."

She stood then, pushing him backwards gently. He had enough energy at least still to scoot upwards so that his entire body was splayed out on the bed. She sat down beside his prone form, giving him a pitiful look as she uncapped the disinfectant. "Sorry," she muttered under her breath before reaching out and pouring it evenly over the hole. She then quickly reached for the towel, biting at her lip as he cried out and pressing it tightly against the wound. His entire body tensed up again as she quickly worked on pressing the gauze in place and taping it down, but her head immediately snapped over to look at his face as the tension once again suddenly left, leaving him limp. She ran a hand over her face, looking concerned; he was definitely unconscious, his breathing even and his face still. "Shit," she cursed silently. This was not good - not good at all. The last thing she needed was a passed out superhero in her bed, especially when Eddie was due back _later today,_ damn it.

"Flash," the journalist said, moving closer to his still body and shaking his shoulder. "Hey, can you hear me?" The man didn't show any signs having heard, his eyes remaining closed, and she sighed, placing one hand gently on one of his flushed cheeks. His skin was hot, she realized - feverish. She would have liked to put a cool washcloth on his forehead, but of course his ever-present cowl was pulled tightly over his face. His face…Iris frowned. The longer she looked at him without his face constantly moving, the more she realized that _damn,_ he looked familiar. Maybe she could just…

She found herself almost unconsciously slipping her fingers under the fabric of the mask, tugging before she froze in her actions, pulling her hand back. What the hell was she doing? She couldn't just pull it off - it was wrong. She chastised herself, but there was still a niggling feeling in the back of her mind, prodding her, telling her to do it. She had always wanted to, hadn't she? Ever since her recent knowledge of his existence, their few meetings. Iris took a deep breath, debating, _something_ still urging her on, and seized the opportunity. She peeled the cowl back to reveal the face underneath - and got the surprise of a lifetime.

* * *

The first thing Barry was aware of as he came to was something cool lying across his forehead, pleasant amidst the heat that seemed to spread throughout the rest of his body. The second was a very sharp, _un_ pleasant pain in his lower abdomen. The speedster groaned, working on getting his heavy eyelids to obey his command of opening. What the hell had happened? He tried to recall. There had been a breaking somewhere, a team of criminals. A gun…and now he was on a bed? Barry frowned; that didn't make much sense. He went back to trying to open his eyes, and finally he won the battle - and found himself staring up at a ceiling, lying on his back on what was definitely a bed. He sat up slowly, grunting at the effort and letting the washcloth fall to the bed - and froze. Because even in the darkness, he immediately recognized his surroundings. He was in Iris's bedroom, in the apartment she shared with Eddie.

Everything seemed to come flooding back then: getting shot, knowing that Joe was out of town and that he had absolutely _no idea_ where Caitlin and Cisco lived, had never bothered to ask. The fact that he needed help, fast - and he had gone to Iris. Except he hadn't intended on passing out - nor taking his cowl off, he suddenly realized with a jolt. Because shit, yes, it was off, and he certainly didn't remember removing it. He scrambled to put it back up, unsure where Iris even _was,_ and oh _shit,_ Joe was going to kill him if -

"Don't bother," a familiar voice rang out, and Barry whipped his head around to see Iris sitting in a chair against the wall next to the bed, arms crossed over her chest. He had never known it was possible to look both concerned and extremely pissed off at the same time, but she was pulling it off quite well.

"Iris, I can explain -" he started, his stomach churning, but he didn't get very far.

"Explain what, Barry? That you're the Flash? Yeah, already figured that part out. That I had to find out because you fucking got yourself _shot_ at two in the morning and had nowhere else to go, and not because you had the decency to _tell_ me?"

"Iris, please -"

"Does my dad know, Barry?"

Barry swallowed nervously but nodded apprehensively.

"And your friends at STAR - Caitlin and Cisco?"

"Iris -"

"So practically _everyone_ knew except for me?"

"Damn it, Iris, will you listen for a minute?" Barry pleaded. "You were the first person I wanted to tell when it happened, alright? But this was for your protection -"

"My _protection_? God, my dad got to you, didn't he?"

"Okay, yeah, he asked me not to tell you, alright? He wanted you to stay safe - and so did I!"

"I can handle myself just fine, Barry!"

Barry reached a hand up to run it through his hair frustratedly, wincing at the strain it put on his still-healing bullet wound. Iris frowned at that, her face softening just the slightest bit - barely enough for him to catch it.

"Be careful, you idiot, you just got yourself shot."

Barry sighed then, very carefully lowering his arm back down to his side. "Look," he said. "I'm sorry, alright? I really am. You shouldn't have - I didn't want you to find out this way. I wanted to tell you, and I definitely didn't want you to be upset over it."

Iris sighed as well as that, running a hand tiredly over her face before getting up from her chair to sit down beside him on the bed.

"I'm not upset that you're the Flash, Bar. I'm upset that I didn't see it sooner, although you did make it pretty hard with all of that voice and face altering shit," she said. "I'm upset that you didn't tell me right away - and trust me, my dad _will_ be hearing about it. But I'm proud of you, you know - I am. And I'm not - I'm not _mad_ at you. I had a little time to mull that over while you were…unconscious."

Barry grimaced. "How long was that, by the way?" he questioned.

"About twenty minutes," Iris replied. "You passed out right after I finished patching you up. How do you feel?"

"It hurts," the speedster admitted. "A lot. But it'll heal soon. That's one of the perks." He smiled softly, and Iris gave him a small one in return.

"Good," she said. "You scared the shit out of me. I don't even want to think about what would have happened if Eddie were here." Barry's face fell a bit at the mention of Eddie, an almost wistful-looking expression crossing his features briefly - Iris attributed it to nerves, the fact that he knew Eddie didn't like his superhero persona.

"Yeah. Sorry about that," he said.

"But why don't you stay? I don't want you all alone at dad's house while you're healing, and Eddie's not due back until later."

Barry looked slightly apprehensive, the idea of sleeping in the same bed she shared with her boyfriend a little - well, uncomfortable. But he got the feeling Iris wouldn't take no for an answer, and nodded. "I - yeah, sure," he said, and Iris smiled, moving to lay down on the opposite side of the bed and shut off the lamp. Barry shifted carefully, pushing the pillow away - he drew the line at using the guy's pillow. He laid down beside Iris, the two close but not touching, the only sounds for a moment the light rain drumming against the window and the two of them breathing until Iris broke the silence.

"Hey, Bar?" she said quietly.

"Yeah?" he asked curiously.

"Don't get yourself shot again, alright? I don't want to have to save your ass twice."

Barry couldn't help the small smile that slid over his lips.

"I'll do my best."


End file.
